Old Dominion Freight Line, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Old Dominion Freight Line first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star then zero on your telephone keypad. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Drew Anderson. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to the first quarter 2023 conference call for Old Dominion Freight Line. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay beginning today and through May 3rd, 2023 by dialing 1-877-344-7529, access code 6525435. The replay of the webcast may also be accessed for 30 days at the company's website. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements, among others, regarding Old Dominion's expected financial and operating performance. For this purpose, any statements made during this call are not statements of historical fact, may be deemed forward-looking statements. Without limiting the foregoing, the words believes, anticipates, plans, expects, and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. You are hereby cautioned that these statements may be affected by the important factors, among others, set forth in Old Dominion's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and in this morning's news release. And consequently, actual operations and results may differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. As a final note before we begin, we welcome your questions today, but we do ask in fairness to all that you limit yourself to one question at a time before returning to the queue. Thank you for your cooperation. At this time for opening remarks, I would like to turn the conference over to the company's President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Greg Gant. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning and welcome to our first quarter conference call. With me on the call today is Marty Freeman, our COO, and Adam Satterfield, our CFO. After some brief remarks, we'll be glad to take your questions. The OD team started this year with first quarter financial results that included revenue of $1.4 billion, an operating ratio of 73.4%, and earnings per diluted share of $2.58. These numbers were slightly below our first quarter results from 2022 and reflect the ongoing softness of the domestic economy and the challenging operating environment. We are also coming off a record year in 2022 where revenue and profits were at an all-time high. As we started this year, we were cautiously optimistic that our business levels would start to improve late in the first quarter and accelerate further in the second quarter. While our volume stabilized during January and February as expected, we have not seen the acceleration in volumes that was originally anticipated. Our shipments per day have remained consistent on a daily basis so far this year, but on a year-over-year basis, shipments in April are trending down double digits. Fortunately, Our market share has remained relatively consistent, and our yield continues to improve. We believe the stability with our market share during the first quarter reflects the value of our service offering and the success of our long-term strategic plan. The guiding principles of this plan have been in place for many years and have helped us produce a strong track record for long-term profitable growth throughout the economic cycle. This plan is centered on our ability to deliver superior service at a fair price to our customers, and we remain committed to providing on-time service and claims-free service as well. We will continue to focus on delivering a value proposition to our customers while also maintaining a disciplined approach to managing the fundamental aspects of our business. This will include making the best decisions to help us navigate through a challenging environment in the short term, while also positioning us for future opportunities to produce long-term profitable growth. While we like to measure our success over years, we believe it takes winning on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis to add up to long-term success. Our consistent focus and successful balance of long-term opportunities against short-term trends has helped us achieve a 10-year compound average growth rate in revenue and earnings per diluted share of 11.4% and 25% respectively. I want to close my last earnings call as CEO by saying how incredibly proud I am of the entire OD family of employees. all 23,000 of us, and the track record of success that we have produced together. I am encouraged by the prospects that our team has for future growth. Without any doubt, I stand firm in my belief that OD has the strongest team in the industry, the best service in the industry, and is better positioned than any LTL carrier to continue to win market share while also increasing shareholder value. Thank you for joining us this morning, and now we'll turn things over to Marty for further discussion of the first quarter.